Rwanda commemorated the 20th anniversary of the 1994 genocide. Rwandans accused of participation in the genocide were tried and convicted in the national courts of several foreign countries. Rwanda continued to make impressive progress in development and the delivery of public services, but freedom of expression and association remain severely restricted. The government obstructed opposition parties and threatened its critics. Prominent exiled dissident Patrick Karegeya was found murdered in South Africa in January 2014. In December 2013 the Supreme Court increased the sentence of opposition party leader Victoire Ingabire from eight to fifteen years on appeal. The leadership of LIPRODHOR, one of the last remaining independent human rights organizations, was taken over in 2013 by pro-government elements. There was a spate of enforced disappearances from March. Some of the missing people later re-appeared in police custody and were transferred to prison, accused of security-related offences. Dozens of people were detained unlawfully, incommunicado, in military custody.

One of many houses marked with the word “Tutsi” stands in a deserted village in eastern Rwanda, just a few kilometers from a church in which more than 1,000 people were massacred by Hutu militiamen during the genocide in 1994.

The 20th anniversary of the 1994 genocide was commemorated in ceremonies and other events across Rwanda, and in many other countries.
Progress in economic and social development remain impressive, but the government continues to impose severe restrictions on freedom of expression and association and does not tolerate dissent. Political space is extremely limited and independent civil society and media remain weak. Real or suspected opponents inside and outside the country continue to be targeted.

Rwanda

Three notorious African leaders -- Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Eritrea's Isaias Afewerki, and Sudan's Omar al-Bashir -- are not invited to this week's U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C. But a number of other long-ruling African strongmen, like Angola's José Eduardo dos Santos, Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, will be there. In fact, over a dozen African countries which will be represented at the summit boast disturbing human rights records of ruthlessly suppressing freedom of expression and freedom of association through harassment, arrest, torture, and trumped up charges and killings.

While President Obama has unveiled specific initiatives to strengthen US development work in Africa and connect it to core national security objectives, he has not done the same for human rights and the rule of law.

I write in response to the ministry of justice’s “assessment” of Human Rights Watch’s work in Rwanda, which was first made known to us through publication in The New Times on June 2, 2014, and was then conveyed to me and to our Rwanda researcher on June 3 in a substantially similar document.

Significant progress has been made in national and international courts to bring to justice those responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Human Rights Watch said today in a briefing paper marking the 20th anniversary of the genocide.